Friday, December 11, 2015

Writer Mark Steyn had a Mr Smith
Goes to Washington afternoon
last Tuesday, when he testified in the Space, Science and Competitiveness Subcommittee's magnificently ornate Senate Russell Office Building Hearing Room 253 in a hearing chaired by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) titled "Data
or Dogma? Promoting Open Inquiry in the Debate over Human Impact on Earth's
Climate".

In a post on
SteynOnline entitled Markey Mark, Steyn was bitter about his confrontation with Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) as an expert witness, condemning the U.S. Senate as an
institution--despite beating the odds by getting a Senator to answer a question
from a witness, a very unusual if not unprecedented occurrence. But that very
colloquy shone a spotlight on just how contentious and treacherous the issue of
climate change has become--global warming revealed as a political "hot
potato."

Intended to
showcase climate data analysis from dissenting scientists, just as the COP-21 meetings also known as the Paris
Climate Conference were taking place, the afternoon's hearing began dramatically, when a
Greenpeace activist approached noted Princeton physics professor Dr. William Happer for an ambush interview captured on video posted to
YouTube:

Apparently there
had been a protest rally prior to the hearing, objecting to allowing the
dissidents to testify in the first place. So, perhaps this confrontation may
have been designed to mau-mau a witness--Dr. Happer had, Wikipedia reported,
been "stung" by Greenpeace before. In any case, nerves were obviously
raw from the get-go, and there didn't appear to be much staff support for Dr.
Happer during the ugly incident.

Seated a few rows
behind the confrontation, I noticed a young man standing oddly, pressing his
chest firmly against Steyn's. They looked like two wildebeest in a National
Geographic nature documentary. The straining duo were soon separated by a
policewoman. After watching the video, it turned out that Steyn had been trying
to prevent fisticuffs, interposing his person between the outraged witness
and his Javert. Steyn was acting as bodyguard.

It seemed odd that
that what ought to have been a cold-blooded discussion of scientific data
points could produce so much heat. Who could have guessed that looking at
temperature charts and graphs could set blood boiling?

In any case,
following this brief clash, the hearing commenced with opening statements from
Senators in attendance.

In Washington, as
Woody Allen once joked, ninety percent of success is showing up. All the
Democrats showed up.

However, John Thune
(R-SD), Chairman of the full committee, was a no-show.

Thus, the most
senior Senator present for the hearing, in an institution dedicated to
Seniority (hence the name "Senate"), was a Democrat.

Only one other
Republican was present on the dais, Senators Steve Daines (R-MT). All the other
G.O.P. members, including Marco Rubio (R-FL), Jerry Moran (R-KS), and Dan
Sullivan (R-AK) were absent. Message: I don't care.

So the signal from
the G.O.P. was clear: Chairman Cruz was almost home alone, while the Democrats
were united.

Given the rules of
the Senate, where question-and-answer time at a hearing is allocated among
Senators, as opposed to witnesses, it meant that the Democrats would enjoy a
6-2 advantage during the proceedings. Cruz had obviously failed to garner the
support of his subcommittee. While he could chair the hearing as a personal
prerogative, he would not be able to control the questioning, nor would he be
able to count on the intercession of Republican Senators to back up
witnesses, should they be browbeaten or ignored.

The layout of the
witness table revealed serious shortcomings in subcommittee staff work as
well. Alongside Steyn were Dr. John Christy, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of
the Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama in Huntsville; Dr. Judith Curry, Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia
Institute of Technology; Dr. William Happer, Cyrus Fogg Bracket
Professor of Physics, Princeton University; and Dr. David Titley (Rear Admiral, USN (ret.)), Professor of Practice,
Department of Meteorology, Pennsylvania State University, Director, Center
for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk.

While Steyn and
Professors Christy, Curry and Happer were Majority witnesses, called by the
G.O.P. to raise questions about purported climate change data, Dr. Titley was a
Minority witness, called by the Democrats. Given the attendance at the hearing,
that meant for every two questions asked by two Republicans of four witnesses,
six could be asked by Democrats of one witness.

The principle of
most Senate hearings is that Democrats call on Minority witnesses. and
Republicans call on Majority witnesses. So, some back-of-the-envelope
arithmetic shows that before one word had been spoken, Dr. Tilley would have
had 30 minutes during each round of questioning (6 Democratic Senators x
5 minutes) versus each of the others, who could be recognized for only 2.5
minutes each, if all were called upon equally (2 G.O.P. Senators x 5 minutes =
10 minutes / 4 witnesses = 2.5 minutes).

While subcommittee
staff might not be able to command Senators to attend when the Chairman is
unable to persuade them, staff could have arranged separate panels of Majority
and Minority witnesses, so that Democrats would not have been able to dominate
the questioning of Republican experts. In order to give a hearing to the
complainants, Majority witnesses could have been scheduled first, then Minority
witnesses on a second panel. It would have been fairer to the experts
themselves--two of whom left the hearing room early after being alternately
ignored and insulted by the Democrats: Dr. Christy, perhaps the world's leading
authority on satellite remote sensing of global temperatures related to climate
change; and Dr. Curry, author of Thermodynamics
of Atmospheres and Oceans.

In the end,
unfortunately, the hearing resembled farcical scenes with Senator Dilworthy in Mark Twain's
satirical novel of Washington, The
Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.

As someone who has
testified before Congress in a
similarly controversial debate, I would say based upon my experience that it is
likely that poor staff work by the Majority permitted subcommittee witnesses to
be abused by the Minority and the hearings to become a circus.

For example,
subcommittee staffers did not even manage to arrange for C-Span coverage of a
hearing with a celebrity witness chaired by a Presidential candidate on one of
the hottest topics in politics: Global Climate Change. Likewise, there was no
coverage in major media such as network news, The New York Times, or Washington
Post.

Indeed, during the
hearing it was Mark Steyn, rather than either Republican Senator, who came to
the rescue of a damsel in distress, when Senator Markey insulted Professor
Curry's integrity as a scientist, then wouldn't allow her to respond. Stein
demanded that the Senator allow her a right of reply, which resulted in an
unusual colloquy, also captured in a YouTube video:

Only later, when Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) denied Steyn a right of reply, did Chairman Cruz recognize the
witness himself:

Bottom line: While
he deserves credit for raising important issues and inviting climate dissidents
to present their concerns before the Senate, Chairman Cruz and his staff failed
to properly manage the hearings to insure that expert witnesses were respected
and their message communicated clearly to the public.

If Senator Cruz
seriously wants to be elected President of the United States, he'll need to
show he can do a better job of managing his own subcommittee.